Cross I Bear
by rebecca-in-blue
Summary: "She rehearsed before she returned to the party circuit in Vienna." Elsa Schraeder appreciation time. A songfic to "You Oughtta Know," by Alanis Morissette.


I wanted to try writing something different, and I thought putting a raunchy breakup song like Alanis Morissette's "You Oughtta Know" in a fandom like _The Sound of Music_ would be just the thing. A lot of the lyrics fit the Elsa/Georg/Maria situation pretty well. I hope you'll give a listen to it while you read this.

* * *

_I want you to know that I'm happy for you  
__I wish nothing but the best for you both_

Those were the lines that Elsa gave her friends when she returned to the party circuit in Vienna. After Georg and Maria's engagement appeared in the society columns – it was a small announcement, nothing like the detailed, half-page spread that she'd been planning – Elsa sat down at her vanity table and watched her face closely in the mirror. "Of course I'm happy for Georg and Fraulein Rainer. I wish them nothing but the best." Over and over she said those words, until she was satisfied that her face and voice were perfectly light and casual, as if she hardly even noticed, much less _cared_, that Georg was already engaged to another woman.

_An older version of me, is she perverted like me?_  
_Would she go down on you in a theater?_

Elsa had never once taken Georg to her bed – not while they were dating, not while they were engaged. Not that _she_ had any old-fashioned qualms about sex outside of matrimony, but abstaining with Georg was part of her strategy. She had wanted to whet his appetite for her, not spoil it. And then, when he _finally_ proposed to her, she thought her plan had worked. But after Maria returned from the abbey and Elsa saw the looks that passed between her and Georg, she wondered if she shouldn't have tried a different approach. If she had pleasured Georg just once with her hands or her mouth, if she had shown him that she could be creative in ways that no silly _nun_ could ever imagine, might he have chosen differently between them?

_Does she speak eloquently, and would she have your baby?_  
_I'm sure she'd make a really excellent mother_

Elsa told herself that was why Georg had chosen Maria, because she would make a better mother for his children. She knew that she wasn't the best mother material. She'd made an effort with the children, and she thought she might have done well with just two or three, but Georg had _seven!_ And it was impossible to make any headway when they were all so obviously set against her from the start. When Georg had announced they were going to have "a new mother," Elsa half feared that the oldest girl, Liesl, would unsheathe her claws and scratch Elsa's eyes out right there. Besides, Maria was so young that she would probably want to have her own baby with Georg after they were married, though Elsa thought only a madman would want another child when he already had seven.

_Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity?_  
_I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner_

Elsa had had quite a rude shock when Georg finally invited her back to Aigen, and she discovered that he ate dinner together with his children every evening. She had never known of any family of their standing who did that. Ordinarily, children dined with the governess, and parents dined alone later. That was how Elsa had been brought up, of course – and Georg, too, she'd always assumed. While she was at the villa, she'd suggested dining separately from the children, but Georg didn't take to that idea. Elsa couldn't understand why until he finally blurted, "I know it seems unusual, but their mother insisted on it," and then she regretted mentioning it at all. She'd tried so hard to be sensitive about Georg's late wife. She'd tried so hard to tiptoe delicately around his broken heart in her high-heeled shoes, and for what?

_It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced_  
_And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?_

Elsa met Stefan at a party thrown by some friends. His gaze lingered on hers when they were introduced, and throughout the evening, she kept noticing him watching her through the crowd of champagne glasses and gleaming jewelry. Stefan was handsome and young, probably fifteen years younger than Elsa – about the same age difference as Georg and Maria, though she quickly pushed that thought away – and she was so pleased that she'd caught his eye that she made her mind up right there. Though she hadn't done it with Georg, Elsa remembered exactly how to send out the right signals. She raised her gaze to his through lowered lashes and laughed her flirtiest laugh, the one that sparkled like champagne. Stefan smiled back at her, and the next time that _she_ threw a party, she made sure that he received an invitation.

_And every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back,_  
_I hope you feel it, well, can you feel it?_

Nobody would give it a second thought if Stefan stayed the night in Elsa's house when her party ran late into the evening. After all, Elsa had one of the grandest homes in Vienna – not as large as Georg's villa in Aigen, though she quickly pushed that thought away – and her guests often stayed overnight when they attended a party there. She was still the perfect hostess, just as Georg had told her on that day last summer, and she made sure to put Stefan in a guest room near her own bedroom. He would be able to get there quite discreetly if he wanted to – and he _would_ want to, Elsa would make sure of that. She would take him to her bed and give him a taste of everything that Georg had missed.

There was nothing half so exciting happening in _Georg_'s bed right now, Elsa was sure of that. Maria wouldn't do anything more than kiss him until they were properly wed, and even after they were married, a woman that age, coming straight from an abbey of dreary old nuns, couldn't possibly be inventive or... _flexible_ in the ways that Elsa was. Elsa would prove to herself that she still knew how to get a man, and she hoped with a little edge of spite, that Georg, in his lonely bed back in Aigen, would somehow know it, too.


End file.
